Thursday, August 27, 2015

The Fixer

The Fixer is my
first experience with a Joseph Finder novel, and I have to admit that near the
beginning of the book I experienced one of those “been there, done that”
moments that had me questioning my intent to finish it.But I persisted, and that turned out to be a
good decision on my part because, in the process, I found out just how good a
storyteller Finder is.

The “been there, done that” moment hit me when I realized
that the thriller’s basic plot sounded very familiar to me.Many, if not most, people have probably read
at least one book, or seen at least one movie, in which the main character
stumbles upon a small fortune in cash, or gold, or jewels, etc.Then, in a weak moment, our hero decides to
keep his find all for himself.Bad move,
that – and the rest of the story involves the guy trying to keep from being
maimed or killed by the bad guys who want their loot back.Well, that is the basic premise of The
Fixer.But Finder throws so many
twists and turns, fun characters, and side plots into his story that I could
not wait to see what was coming next and ended up quite enjoying the book.

Rick Hoffman’s (our hero) friends would probably agree that
his judgment is not always the best.Once a well respected up-an-coming investigative reporter, Rick made
what turned out to be a terrible mistake by letting a slick Boston magazine
hire him away from his newspaper job.Now the magazine has failed and Rick, along with most all of his
co-workers, is history.Things have
gotten so bad, in fact, that Rick is camping out in his father’s old house, an
unheated structure that seems just about ready to fall down around him.

Author Joseph Finder

Rick’s luck changes -but not for the better - when he finds
a large stash of cash hidden in the old house by his father.How did it get there?Does it belong to his father, who has not
lived in the house for eighteen years, or to someone his father had been hiding
it from?Rick, though, can’t resist the
lure of all that cash, and when he starts throwing hundred-dollar bills around,
he draws the notice of some very bad people – and they want their money
back.But, even more, they want Rick to
stop trying to figure out why it was in his father’s house in the first place.

If The Fixer is
typical of Finder’s writing, the man certainly knows how to tell a good story
and give his readers a fun ride. This definitely
will not be the last Joseph Finder title I read.

By the standards of today's thrillers, this one's language and sex scenes are pretty tame. I do remember, I think, about three F-bombs. And, for the life of me, I don't remember any sex scene at all...that is all implied in the book's "happy" ending.

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